Discount Hunting Equipment Burlington VT

Local resource for discount hunting equipment in Burlington, VT. Includes detailed information on local businesses that provide access to shooting supplies, rangefinders, trail cameras, hunting footwear, gun gears, discount hunting clothes, and flashlights, as well as advice and content on hunting accessories.

10 Tips to Save Money in Your Shooting Budget

As prices increase, many shooters are looking for ways to take the bite out of their shooting budget. Here are ten tips to help:

Take the bite out of your shooting budget:

If you are like most, you did not buy nearly enough ammo over the past few years. Most of us told ourselves that our budgets just couldn’t be stretched any farther. So our ammunition reserves either dwindled or stayed static despite knowing that prices were rising. Boy are we sorry now! Anyone who was not paying attention had a severe dose of sticker shock when hunting season arrived, and it is just getting worse. This is not an “I told you so” piece despite my advice to stock up on ammo in articles from late 2006 and early 2007. This is a warning about what is coming next and what you can do about it. It is too late to buy cheap ammo. You will never see brass cased, boxer primed 308 of good quality for under $200 per thousand again. You will never again see even steel cased 7.62x39 to feed your $99 SKS for $99 per thousand. You will never again see 9mm Luger for $12 per 100. Not only has the price of factory loaded ammunition soared, the price of reloading components have begun to climb as well. What can you do?

Here are 10 steps you can take to offset some of the financial bite in your shooting budget.

#1) Shop wisely - use the internet and toll free phone numbers to research current prices and comparison shop. Information is power; use it to your advantage. Some sites raise prices more slowly than others. Some include shipping in their prices. Be sure that you are matching apples to apples when comparing prices and factor every penny including shipping and sales taxes when you are making mail order purchases.

#2) Watch for retail bargains at local stores. If your local gun shop or back country general store has an odd box of cartridges or shotgun shells with a five year old price sticker on it. Buy it. The price of ammo has literally doubled in the last five years. Even those last few dusty corners will be cleaned out soon. If you can take advantage of a ‘first in last out’ inventory system, do it before someone else does. Every once in awhile the larger stores like Dick’s and Wal-Mart will run ammunition sales with discounts on case quantities that still seem reasonable. If you see a good sale, stock up!

#3) Roll your own. Reloading has long been a means of saving a few dollars as well as improving the quality of loads tweaked for your rifle. Despite the recent increase in the cost of reloading components, you will still pay less for ammo you load yourself than for off the shelf factory loaded ammunition. The price of reloading components and equipment have begun to climb as the cost for materials and interest in reloading have increased. The prices wil...

Don't Forget Ebay and Craigslist

Author:

bigalwapiti

We all know about Ebay and Craigslist so don't forget to use it for all your hunting gear. You really should shop ebay or your local craigslist if you are on a budget it will be a great place to save money.

I just picked up a Harris bipod rest for my rifle for $50 (retail $120) also a trail camera for $30 (retail $70). Get your clothes, hats, shoes, backpacks, just about everything you can imagine. I picked up my Stiener Binoculars a few years ago for $300 cheaper than I could purchase anywhere else. You will find alot of hunters that haven't been drawn for anything this year that will be selling a lot of their equipment in this tight economy....

Save $$$ at the Range

Rather than spend my hard earned pennies on those cool Shoot-N-See targets or even the preprinted targets at sporting goods stores, I save a few bucks for weekend plinking sessions by using paper plates as targets. A 100 count pack of paper plates costs less than a 10 count pack of preprinted targets.

If you are playing with something like a semi auto AK, or building a young shooters confidence with a 22 or shotgun, those big eight inch blanks are perfect for putting holes in all weekend long without breaking your budget. An eight inch circle at 100 yards is also a reasonable approximation of deer vitals and perfectly adequate for sighting in your rifle at closer ranges. Most bore-sighters etc will put you on an eight inch target at 25 yards easily. After that, you can tweak your sights or dial in your scope as you move the next target plate back to 50, 75, or 100 yards. Once sighted in you can test reloading recipes at 100+ yards easily. And if you want to challenge yourself once you are comfortable with the sight picture and ammunition you can move your 8 inch plate back to 150 or 200 yards. My point is that you get 100 targets to play with for a few bucks instead of just a few of the more expensive pre-printed ones. That saves more money for other things - like ammunition to use putting more holes in your money saving targets!